I have an old iMac (2011 2.5Ghz i5 which has been great but struggles a bit under load these days. I also have a 2015 2.9 Ghz Retina MBP but this is problematic lately due to (I think) High Sierra, but might have viruses. On the MBP I cannot seem to get MacKeeper to install - it just gets terminally stuck. Sophos will not get past the "Allow" button in security and it seems High Sierra will not allow these things to work - the "Advisory" doesn't work either.

I want to buy a new Mac but I do not want High Sierra or anything later - too much trouble. So many things are having problems with High Sierra. Can I get a new Mac and somehow port all my existing software from the old iMac over to it. Or should I cut my losses, ditch Mac, and do a complete re-start on a high end PC - and if so which PC would you recommend?

Mackeeper is ditched - thanks. Sophos seems to have installed, but it's unusual, in that it has no front end except for something that lives at the top of the screen and has no option for "Scan Now" (I'm in the 30 day trial period by the way)

I'm no computer geek, I want to read the news, check facebook, run Nuendo 8 and Reason 10. That's it. But OSX seems to change faster and more frequently than vendors can keep up with. I lost my old MS Office on my Macbook Air (my only non musical Mac) by updating to Mojave and while I understand the need to go completely to 64 bit, it is unnerving to realise that you can suddenly be without your must-have studio apps.

Hence the request to understand whether it's possible to port everything including the OS and all settings, drivers etc over to a brand new machine.

I never really recovered from the loss of M-Audio Profire when Firewire got suddenly ditched, until RME Digiface USB appeared, and I don't want any more of that trauma. Luckily my Firewire stuff wasn't top end expensive - as it was for at least one other person on thisforum.

I'm currently looking at changing out, or having repaired a hefty power supply unit for a rack of Sony converters assembled in 1990, which drops the 5V supply but not the +15V or -15V supply when all 16 channels of converters are connected. This happened after a fishy smell from the unit became apparent.

I'm confident the PSU can be replaced or repaired, but the point is this kind of longevity from hardware boxes stuffed with capacitors, diodes, IC's, resistors, transistors and transformers solidly out performs that of OSX. It wouldn't be so worrying if the entire software setup could just be ported over to new hardware.

DevOps has come to a dead-end, proving that the notion of endless progress is a myth. I plan to keep plugging away with my Yosemite build until I have no other option. After that I'll probably go live acoustic and be done with it.

fwiw, don't even think about migrating to WIN10 and above unless you really want to be disappointed. Having your OS be SAAS and provided by a company that is both poorly run and a quasi-intelligence agency has proven to be the bad idea everyone knew it was to begin with. The October update debacle wasn't a one off.

I'm not sure that's quite true, AFAIK you can install an older OSX version but, probably, not one older than the first version a computer model shipped with, some models last for two or three OSX revisions and you should be able to install the earliest OSX on all those computers.

Obviously there are issues when the older OSX has no drivers for the newer hardware but that applies to Windows and Linux too.

In the end I bought a second hand iMac with High Sierra already installed, but with a faster processor, and more memory. I was afraid that drivers would be an issue. Now to try to get everything across. I like the idea of a carbon copy app. I will check that out.

I think this was discussed elsewhere, but it MIGHT be better to try doing fresh installs of programs rather than copying everything across? It means any old unused bits won't clog up your drive? YMMV. Whatever you do, good luck with the new toy!

I think this was discussed elsewhere, but it MIGHT be better to try doing fresh installs of programs rather than copying everything across? It means any old unused bits won't clog up your drive? YMMV. Whatever you do, good luck with the new toy!

I agree - this is what I did when I got my new Mac.

It *does* work much better this way. Especially as any little (or large) bugs that may have crept in over time don't get copied over.

When I got my 2nd Mac I copied everything over via TimeMachine - it worked fine, but I did feel that some nasties had been copied over as well. When I got my 3rd Mac a few months ago, I did a complete fresh install and it works much better.

On the old Mac (Mac #2) I did a complete Blatt! (with help over the 'phone from Apple) and set it up as if it was a brand new computer and gave it to the wife to replace her ancient PC (which was taking 5 or 10 minutes to boot up).

Well, a couple of items of good news to report. Firstly, and since I had nothing to lose, I backed up the old iMac using Time Machine, and then restored to the just as old but higher spec iMac.

It seems to have worked perfectly. All seems well.

Secondly, the TV repair guy in Rayong - the guy that fixed my 02R96 Power Supply - fixed my Sony A/D Rack Power supply, which had ditched the 5V and kept the +15 and -15V lights on, while smelling very fishy and getting hot very quickly. The unit dates from 1990 so it had done well. He took out the 5V board and replaced a bag full of capacitors and some other things. Now it's all working properly, smell free and cool as a cucumber.

But just to put a minor damper on everything, my cat threw my iPad Mini (the one with all my SOS issues (plus Classic Bike and Future Music) on it, off a shelf. I now read the mags through a sieve of broken glass. Oh well.